You and Me Time and Space
by SonicTeamCE
Summary: "Sit still." "Are you going to...paint me?"


**AN ~ I got inspired by the thought of the three dimensional painting. SPOILER WARNING for Day of the Doctor: I get that freezing Gallifrey works how it did, because they were kinda taking a photo of it. What intrigues me is that Gallifrey Falls No More was an **_**oil painting. **_**There's a level of interpretation and artistry that comes with that moreso than the functional-photography capturing of Gallifrey. It was implied that the Doctor did this painting, so I got inspired. Enjoy!  
**

.o.o.o.

"Sit down."

As she stepped into the Tardis, River was struck dumb. She disregarded the instruction, turning slowly as she walked further into the room. It was not the control room – at least, not in its typical format. The floor was large and open, carpeted blue: the central pillar now formed part of the back wall, along which the console stretched in a straight line. Candles and lanterns were littered around the railing and the rafters, their golden light seeming at first to clash with the green-blue of the desktop setting, but becoming more unnaturally beautiful as they blended.

From his vantage point on the risen passage that ran around his new console, the Doctor smiled gently down at River as she stopped, awestruck, in the centre of the room. She stared at the armchair that had appeared there as if it were a bizarre archaeological find. The Doctor sunk against his arms, watching her curiosity and her strength and her gentleness – rare in her younger days, uncertain as she was of her place in the world. He wondered how he had ever been able to stay away from her for so long. He would have run down the stairs there and then, and swept her off her feet and kissed her, but he had something to show her first.

He clapped his hands, snapping both of them out of their trances, and sprung down the stairs, beaming.

"Sit down!" the Doctor insisted, gesturing to the chair with both hands.

"Why?" River frowned. Always she questioned him, this one!

"Because! I have a surprise! I'm going to take a picture of you."

He tweaked her nose. She smirked at his enthusiasm, and tried to cover it up with a roll of her eyes, but not to be put off, he steered her shoulders until they were standing in front of it. River sat of her own accord, pulling her knees and ankles together, posing as if for a royal portrait, only turning her head to watch the Doctor as he appeared to be pacing around her. It seemed like a big deal to make of a picture, even for the Doctor.

He was setting up a series of tripod-like accessories, but if they held cameras, they were unlike any cameras River had ever seen. They looked more like snow-globes or bizarre paperweights. They were about the size of her fist, cubes cut with rounded corners, like giant transparent dice. Well, they seemed transparent at first, but as the Doctor held one up to her face for her to look through, she saw that where there should have been blue carpet there was the red of her dress, and there was gold and black and a deep maroon colour.

She stared at it in amazement, and instinctively reached out to touch it, to hold it and turn it in her own hands. The Doctor snatched it away and tweaked her nose again. This time she didn't catch a chuckled before it slipped out. She let him have that one, smiling in defeat as he raised a victorious eyebrow and fixed the final camera-cube to its tripod in front of her.

"This isn't an ordinary picture," she deduced.

"No, it's not. So sit still."

He was setting something else up now, slightly to the right of the camera-cube that was staring her in the face. It appeared to be…an easel?

"Still!" the Doctor insisted as her posture shifted.

"You can talk!" she scolded, but she posed again and waited for him to settle. He stood behind the easel and let out a deep sigh. The Tardis dimmed her own lights, dousing River in white and gold. River recalled the strange colours in the cube.

"Are you going to…paint me?" she asked softly. Her expression softened too, even when the Doctor held up a hand, ushering her into silence. It was bizarre, seeing him still for a moment. Seeing the urgency drain from his face – from his whole body. She felt herself relax as she watched him reach slowly up and place his hand on the camera-cube nearest him, totally at ease with the process, as if he had done it a thousand times before. He was so careful, so gentle, she wondered how she could ever believe that this man could be a destroyer of worlds.

Biting her lip, she turned her face away. Stupid and sentimental. Both of them knew those things were true, and no matter how wonderfully serene and honest he -

"_River."_

The word was barely audible. He may not even have been aware that he said it, but it caught her heart and made her turn back to him. A furrow had appeared between his brows, and his fingers on the camera-cube were shaking. He had squeezed his eyes shut. He looked like he might cry.

Before she really knew what she was doing, River got up. He didn't tell her to sit down again, perhaps he didn't even know she'd left. She put a hand on his shaking hand, and with the other guided his lips to hers with a pull on the lapel. She kissed the agony off his face. He sighed gratefully, reverently, and kissed her back until she couldn't breathe. His arms wrapped tighter and tighter around her, and did not let go until, dizzy, she pulled back from the kiss.

Blushing furiously, he blustered about for a moment. "River, I- What was that? I told you to sit still!"

She didn't reply, smiling at the canvas he had set up.

"Three-dimensional mental painting is an extremely complicated process," he went on. "It requires _absolute _focus! How am I supposed to focus with you and your Pond and your dress and your hands and your-"

"Hush." She put a finger on his lips and he cut himself off instantly, his eyes caught by the canvas too. The two figures were wrapped in each other, as close as they could be, kissing like the rest of the world was lost to them. The colours were mostly dark – red and black and purple - but the woman's hair was a gentle yellow, like a cloud of curls even where her partner wrestled for grip on the back of her head. Around them and between them, binding them together but at the same time, trying to pull them apart, was a brilliant, glistening, golden thread.

This was another moment, he decided, that would have two names which were in fact, one.


End file.
